Slavic Gospel Association Canada
Thursday July 29th, 2010
In situations where a developing mother church has a group of 15-25 faithful disciples ready to be trained for church planting ministries, SGA partners provide the necessary support and SGA partner churches send their pastors to conduct two-week intensive courses that make up a 32-week Bible institute curriculum.
A Strategic Bible Institute (SBI) is a one-year, full-time, church-based Bible institute principally for the training of national church planters. These are distinguished from our permanent Bible institutes in that the SBIs are relocated annually in order to train as many men for ministry as possible in as many locations as possible.
The SBI program is just one of many ways in which SGA partners are helping evangelical churches across the CIS address the need for trained, qualified church planters, pastors, and church workers. As new, Bible-preaching churches are planted and many new believers are added to them, it is imperative that they have shepherds well-schooled in God’s Word. This is not only to disciple and nurture them in their new faith, but also to protect them from the many deceptive cults and false teachers that continue to flood in following the break-up of the Soviet Union.
Students are selected and sent by their local church leadership on the basis of their proven record of faithful service, their giftedness, and their fruitfulness in ministry.
North American pastors are invited to participate as teachers based upon compatibility with the Biblical doctrines and philosophies of ministry embraced by the churches which make up the Union of Evangelical Christians-Baptists. A standardized curriculum includes course materials for the sixteen courses followed by three months of practical internship with an experienced church planter. Class materials are provided in the Russian language and teaching is done through an interpreter. Teaching opportunities are normally assigned a year in advance. SGA provides travel assistance including visa assistance, etc.